Joe Cerrell, RIP

Political consultant extraordinaire Joe Cerrell passed away this week. Joe was a pioneer in the field.

www.josephcerrell.com

My friend Joe Cerrell

As the Web page set up to celebrate Joe notes,

Cerrell’s political career began in the 1950s at the University of Southern California (USC), where he started the Trojan Democratic Club on a campus known at the time for its Republican activism. His political savvy soon caught the eye of Jesse M. Unruh, leading to a position on his State Assembly campaign and later on the staff of Attorney General Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown, running for his first term as California Governor in 1958.

After Brown won, Cerrell was approached again by Unruh, who had become Speaker of the California Assembly, to run the California Democratic Party. At just 24, Cerrell was the youngest person ever to do so. That experience led Cerrell to the Kennedy presidential campaign, where he became California campaign manager, directing all operations in the Golden State. Interviews with Cerrell are part of the Oral History Project at the Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston.

And that’s just from the early years. I first met Joe when I worked for the Los Angeles Daily News from 1987 to 1992. He was, as every piece you will read about him notes, larger-than-life.

His daughter Sharon Levy captured some of her father’s magic in a note written earlier this week:

Did you know Joe was the one who, back in like 1965, suggested in a letter to the chairman of PSA that they should serve a snack “like nuts” with the in-flight cocktails?! Or that the desk he’s always had came from Pierre Salinger’s office?

I just had an e-mail from one of his friends, and in it, he reminded me that my dad “has lived a rich enjoyable life…because he created it.” So true. My husband also said to me how amazing it was to think that everything my dad ever did/had was by his own making.

In the course of my work, I’ve met a lot of interesting and powerful men who did amazing things. But few of them generated the kind of love I saw between Joe and his wife, Lee, and his children, Sharon, Joe and Steve. The Romans clap when a funeral procession passes by. From afar, I do as the Romans do.